Monthly Archives: October 2020

Vacation Photos

So many times when I go places where tourists would go, I notice people taking photos everywhere with phones, DSLRs, iPads, or anything else with a camera. So many people spend so much time trying to immortalize their experiences with photos that they don’t actually get to enjoy their surroundings! I had this problem too! I would take photos everywhere I went the whole time on hikes, at museums, at new places I visited, in hotel rooms. Why do we do this though and why is it bad?

Time and time again you’ll hear people talk about this topic and say “just enjoy the moment”. I wholeheartedly agree with this despite how trite it is to say. I used to take photos and never get to actually make memories when I thought I was making them by taking photos!! What I really got though was a bunch of rushed bad photos with vague memories attached to them.

In this post’s featured image, I climbed a mountain with some friends and brought a whole camera with me. I regret this now because I don’t remember much other than the bad photos that resulted haha.

In my experience, the saying “quality over quantity” applies greatly to this situation. If you feel so inclined to take photos on a trip, choose the right moments, and make it count. Take your time with that one shot at a memorable location and don’t take too many more! No matter how many photos you take, they’re only for memories so you’re only going to need the few to remember what happened, instead of remembering how you took a bunch of rushed crappy photos.

The Pleated Tennis Skirt

Hey guys and welcome back to another week of blogging! This week’s post is all about tennis skirts. Over the past five months we have seen the pleated tennis skirt come into style, mainly because of the influence of TikTok. Many popular influencers, specifically on TikTok have been seen wearing a pleated tennis skirt. These […]

Peer Review #2

Today I will be reviewing Angelika’s website titled “Traditional Russian Cuisine” which let’s me know exactly what it’s about and I was very excited to explore her website because I didn’t have a lot of knowledge about Russian food so I was really curious and wanted to know more! Her website is linked here: http://cookingrussiandishes.com/

Her site is very beautiful, the images she uses are very colorful and flow nicely and she has a lot of white space. It was very easy to navigate through her website and I do love food so I was very interested, not only that but the images she used really draw you in. Her site is very usable and fun to explore especially with all of the colors which really gets your attention and keeps you curious. And honestly who doesn’t love food?

There is some integration of social media on her site, like a little side menu with links to platforms like Facebook and I think one link to Instagram.

One thing that I would recommend would be the placement of her “About” boxes which are located on the right of her Home Page, and the rest of her posts are located on the left. I was thinking that since the writing for her posts are centered, it might be a good idea to move the “About” boxes to the bottom of her page and see if she can center the pages so that it correlates to her writing setup.

Angelika is doing a really good job with her website and I can’t wait to see what else she provides for us. You can tell it is something she is really passionate about and is a very unique that piques your interest!

Process Post: Audience

I know that my main audience wanted to be directed at those who are around my age, either in high school, college, or maybe just graduated from college. It didn’t really matter to me whether or not they were athletes; if people in the audience were athletes, I hope they would still find my website interesting because my position is pretty unique. When people think of soccer they tend to think of the goal scorers or the defenders and not really the goalkeepers.

Because of this position I tend to think differently about certain situations so I wanted to outline my thinking process the most with my blogs. In addition, goalkeeping is pretty intense and requires a lot of strength and can be perceived as a more masculine position and while I am very strong and athletic I also have a very gentle personality. So I went with more of a girly theme because it stood out to me and I liked it. I had also hoped that it would draw more girls to my site as well and keep them curious, considering the title of my website speaks for itself about what it’s all about.

Process Post: Response to Peer Review

Today I am posting my response to Vanessa’s review of my website. I am thrilled that she enjoyed my idea and appreciated her constructive feedback, especially about the theme of my site. I was able to switch themes that I think better suited my website. I am sad to say that I fell behind on my posts so she didn’t have a lot to work with and the site was a bit of a mess.

Once I got my theme sorted out I was able to map out my site more effectively and organize it a lot more. I know I still have a lot of work to do and things to figure out, but I think at this point it is a matter of playing around with the different settings.

Peer Review 2: Falling For Fashion

Click here to visit Falling For Fashion. First Glance Through When first landing on the blog Falling For Fashion. I am greeted with a welcome message and an explanation of what the blog is about. It is nice to have this text there, however, I don’t think it is completely needed as the banner and initial […]

Process Post 6: Reflecting on my Blog

This process post I’ve decided to focus on my progress and thoughts on the state of my blog. Over the past 6 weeks, I’ve been working a full time job as a video producer, creating content for this blog, completing assignments for this class and a visual analytics class as well. I haven’t had much […]

Remix Something

Hello!

For this assignment, I was trying to think what I could remix. For some reason, I instantly thought of remixing a song, but that doesn’t really make sense for my blog and/or is really out of my abilities.

So I decided to remix a painting I found on Pinterest.

I decided to paint the exact same painting, just in cooler colours.

Thats all for this assignment! Let me know what you think 🙂

<3 Carissa

The post Remix Something appeared first on the Power of Painting.

The Democracy of Social Media

In today’s time, the impact of social media is such that if you were to not speak anything for the rest of your life verbally but were voicing your opinion digitally on a platform, you’d still be highly impactful. Social media, at its core is one of the biggest tenets of democracy but democracy is interpreted in different ways and is fluctuating constantly. The level of freedom an individual has on social media, is now dependent on their status and the audience they are connected to.

Social media, although claiming to be a space that is equal for all to voice their opinions, is heading towards becoming a completely authoritarian medium. The average person is told their actions on social media are in their control and uninfluenced. In reality, the authoritarians of social media, which can be further categorized as government representatives, officials, parties, etc., have become more and more strategic in their manipulation of the information that is distributed on digital media. Politics looks very different over the years as social media has become even more of an outlet to promote political campaigns, advertise groups of people believing in the same idea, and constantly influence the decisions the citizens of a country make. For example, Donald J. Trump, president of the United States of America, is one of the most talked about and well known people on social media, although not in the best way. His actions are the epitome of unacceptable and irrational, yet somehow he gets away with everything he says. This is because he has a following of people that support him blindly so he can say whatever he wants and to whomever he wants to. However, had it been any other person in place of him, they would have received more  backlash and faced consequences for their words. Being an authority figure and  a person in power gives him the buffer to be unfiltered. In the article “From Liberation To Turmoil: Social Media and Democracy”, authors   Joshua A. Tucker, Yannis Theocharis, Margaret E. Roberts, and Pablo BarberĂĄ talk about how “Social-media technology is young, but has already played a part in numerous turbulent protests and a highly polarized U.S. election. Social media have often been described as the site for conflict between “good” democratic forces who use social media to make their voices heard and “bad’’ autocratic and repressive forces who aim to censor this channel to silence these liberal elements” (page 47). This explains how the shift in the idea of democracy in social media has taken place over the years. Another example is Greta Thunberg and her receiving mixed responses on her responsible attitude towards the environment. Her freedom to express her opinions shows the democracy of social media but the attempts to make her points seem invalid by numerous people, demonstrated that the freedom to express comes with the idea that what a person says are not as important if you are not a person in power. This goes to show that the democracy claimed to be existent on social media in today’s time is a myth and used to make the general public believe that they have an equal opportunity to express their voice without any restrictions.

Secondly, the type of audience and the age demographic impacts the response received on a statement and in turn impacts the freedom to express. In general, whether it be praise and approval or backlash and criticism, it is different when it comes to the platform and the audience it is used and viewed by. For example, Tik Tok is a platform that has individuals sharing and creating content over varying age groups. One minute you could be watching a Tik Tok with a university student giving tips on how to schedule your life, and the next minute a person could be seen supporting Donald Trump. Each type of content affects a different type of audience and the thoughts expressed  in each one are drastically different as well. This goes to show that democracy does exist on social media but the backlash will be received on certain content that is found offensive or unappealing to the audience watching it. There will be people supporting the content receiving backlash and there will be people disagreeing with content being supported. If the response received on a statement or thought someone has to say, makes them change their mind about it, then the freedom of expression is not really there. In situations where the statement is negative and deserves backlash, for example with Donald Trump, freedom of expression or democracy of social media is an important thing so that the wrong can be criticized. This means that social media, however democratic we may consider it, isn’t actually so democratic because your thoughts can be influenced because of the audience it’s distributed amongst and that is not a negative thing all the time.

In conclusion, the existence of democracy in relation to social media is based on individual experience mainly. The freedom to express one’s thoughts and concerns while worrying about the  response it will receive is creating somewhat of an invisible filter between the person expressing  and the targeted audience. Social media is a democratic platform to begin with, but as the complexity of what it means to have freedom on such a platform increases, the more difficult it is to determine the democracy of it.

Works Cited:

Journal of Democracy Volume 28, Number 4 October 2017 © 2017 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press

Social media is rotting democracy from within January 22, 2019 https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/22/18177076/social-media-facebook-far-right-authoritarian-populism

Psychology of Cyberspace – The Online Disinhibition Effect http://truecenterpublishing.com/psycyber/disinhibit.html

Social Networks And Democracy: A Difficult Fit, Or Just Plain Impossible? October 16, 2019 https://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2019/10/16/social-networks-and-democracy-a-difficult-fit-or-just-plain-impossible/

Essay #1: Internet freedom?

In 2018 the Pew Research Center conducted a survey of Americans and found that 53% of their respondents got their news from internet sources in 2017 (PRC 2018), 20% from social media, and 33% from online news articles. In recent history, social media websites such as Facebook started to censor posts that they deemed to be “abusive”, with conservative news posts being left out from trending pages sorted by algorithms (The Guardian 2016).

In the early days of the popularization of social media as a news source, Twitter was hailed as the most efficient method of distributing news to the general population, with journalists relying on updates from regular people for content on live events and disasters. But today, we are censored by algorithms that former Facebook employees admit to being biased (The Guardian 2016). How can we trust what we see online? Are we all being groomed to think and act a specific way based on what we are told to read and listen to? Social media isn’t as democratic as we think, however, the internet as a whole is still free as long as we seek neutral sources of information and purposefully explore alternative opinions.

When we post online, usually we expect to have complete control over our content as an individual with freedom just as someone would expect when speaking in public. However, many posts can be subject to censorship or removal based on community guidelines set out by many sites. An example is Facebook. In their terms and conditions, they list that

Talk about Lolitta(1997)

       In terms of the love film content, eroticism is not a common element in love films. Eroticism is not a necessity for a love film, but it helps to express the subtle relationship among lovers which can not express in word.

The article Crash ‘Not a Film about pornography-a love story’ has a discussion on the eroticism in film Crash that the impact of eroticism divides critics upon the film. People comment as “it shows us what pornography might look like if it were made with imagination, intelligence and daring”, “it makes pornography safe and elegant” and so on. This reminds me of a question keep questioning myself, that what makes a love film with erotic scenes distinguishing from a pornography film? Professor Laura U.Marks’s article Video haptics and erotics offer a direction to think about this question. In her argument, she firstly defines haptic perception as “the combination of tactile, kinesthetic, and proprioceptive functions, the way we experience touch both on the surface of and inside our bodies”. Usually, this kind of tactile or haptic visuality has the capacity to trigger a chain of reactions within the physical body initiated from the optical visuality, and it “tend to rest on the surface of its object rather than plunge into depth, tend not to distinguish form so much as discerning texture”. The notion “Cinematic perception is not merely (audio)visual but synaesthetic” which she argues in the article becomes the breakthrough point to think about the problem of how to distinguish pornography and erotic love film. Marks argues that “the act of viewing, seen in the terms of existential phenomenology, is one in which both I and the object of my vision constitute each other.” which indicates that the essential quality of viewing is a form of mutually constitutive exchange. However, to some extent, the erotic moving image is not able to form such a mutually constitutive exchange because the erotic moving image tends to be a direct conversation between moving images on the screen and the human body. What eroticism do is unilaterally deliver erotic images to the spectators and stimulate the spectator’s senses but does not necessarily need the spectators to respond to the eroticism. Hence, the limitation of pornography is that it functions only as a body sense stimulation but does not necessarily plunge into depth. However, eroticism in love film has a totally different function. Since erotism in love film is one of the techniques of expression, so the erotic scene in love film does not only work as a body senses stimulation but also a medium or a bridge to understanding the characters and the love between them. To understand the love relationship hidden behind the erotic scene require spectators to develop their subjectivity upon the moving image which forms the mutually constitutive exchange. In a love film, such a mutually constitutive exchange is necessary to create a renderable and emotional love story. And this trait of erotic love film makes it essentially distinguishing from pornography.  In the film Lolitta(1997), the erotic scenes reflect the importance of mutually constitutive exchange and the importance of haptic visuality. In the scene when Lolitta and Humbert are first night together in a hotel, the Dim dark blue light and the ambiguous atmosphere are foreshowing the next step of their relationship. However, the physical body is never exposed in the scene as to present eroticism. The camera utilizes a close-up shoot to focus on Lolitta’s leg slowly moves toward Humbert under the bedsheet. She asks Humbert to get some water for her, after she finished drinking, she leaned her mouth on Humbert’s shoulder and wiped her mouth with his clothes. In the later scene, Humbert finds out a box of money which Lolitta probably earn it by selling her body. The two are naked in the darkroom, and their emotional conflicts are mixed together with the erotic scene. The expression of emotion in these scenes is sufficient to stand alone even without dialogues because of the effectiveness of haptic cinematic experience on spectatorship.

Fun on Film

Hi everyone! Welcome back to another week of blogging here at Falling for Fashion. Today’s post is going to be a bit different from my usual fashion trend posts. I took the time this week to reflect on my social media appearance and appearance over the media in general. Let’s take Instagram for example. When you are viewing someone’s Instagram profile, you are looking at some of their best pictures. As I was reflecting upon my media appearance this past week, I realized that the pictures I post are usually posed, rather than pictures captured within the moment. This realization gave me the opportunity to reflect more on living in the moment rather than just living through the moment.

That being said, one way to capture those moments while still living in them is through film cameras. My favourite part about having a film camera is the idea of not knowing how the photos turned out until you get them developed. This has allowed me to live in the moment without caring about what I look like in the picture and how the picture turned out. What I also love about film is the fact that half the time you forget about some of the pictures you took on that roll. It’s always the best when you’re looking at through the developed pictures and you are pleasantly surprised and excited when you see one you forgot you took.

Why I chose film – you may be wondering why a 17 year old girl chose to buy a film camera. My parents make fun of me all of the time saying, “why would you use a film camera if you can take a perfectly good photo on your phone?” or “film is so old school!” Not only is film a way for me to capture the fun moments in life, but it is also a way for me to remember those times as a teenager. There was one day where my sister and I were over at my grandparents house looking through old photo albums for fun. I got to see what it was like growing up for my grandparents and also my parents. I have taken my film photos and placed them in a photo album. When I am older, I hope to keep this album within my family for future generations to look back on!

If you are new to film cameras and just want to try one out and not have to invest in a real film camera, I suggest you grab a disposable film camera from your local Walmart or London Drugs. These cost no more than $15 CDN and they come with 27 shots. If you are still unsure about purchasing a film camera or a disposable, I suggest downloading the apps David’s Disposable by David Dobrik or Huji Cam.

Peer Review #1

This is a peer review on my classmate David Nam’s blog “Pro Gaming Review”. 

Firstly, we will talk about the design aspect of the blog. I can see that he has thought about and put effort into how his blog appears visually. At first glance, the colors are very eye catching and I’m sure a person visiting his blog will be intrigued and want to take a deeper look at the blog’s content. The color contrast is well chosen because the purple heading and blue background make the blog pop and stand out. The blog is very organized and it is easy to find posts because they are organized into relevant categories. The labelling is also done accurately and when skimming over his content I can see that he has put effort into what he’s written about. The vision board is a Venn diagram/mind map and he has a description to go along with it talking about how he narrowed down to choosing to make a blog on video games from a bunch of his hobbies. About the vision board, I feel that he can add more imagery so that it appears as an actual “vision” board rather than an infographic of some sort. I would also suggest talking more about further plans and ideas and where he plans on taking this blog. 

Secondly, I’ll talk about the content of his blog and his online self he has created. I like that he made a connection to his childhood in his ‘About’ section because as a reader/viewer it helps you understand where this hobby is coming from and even for non-video gamers it helps them better understand the personality of the blogger. He has a section dedicated to gaming reviews which I think is very helpful for people wanting to try those video games because if they search on google they can narrow down to David’s blog and will find helpful information. The reviews are personal in the sense that they come from his experience and don’t seem fabricated which connects to what we learned in class about having a true presence of yourself. It’s important for blog viewers to be able to see who you are as a person and what your opinion is not what others think or have said about the same thing previously. I can also see he has kept up to date on assignments and that is commendable because it is very hard to keep going and keep consistent. That’s also another thing about creating a successful online self. David staying on track and consistent with his work, is very good for his personality online because when he has more viewers and people who look forward to his reviews and content, they will stay engaged and be excited to see content. Eventually more people will be drawn to his blog  due to content but also because of consistency. A good example is “Wikihow” because they post so often that even if the content is not as helpful or engaging, they have people viewing their page a million times. This is why I feel David has done a good job with keeping consistent and making good content. Overall, I’d say his blog is doing well and learning has been applied well. Only suggestion is talking more about his vision of the blog and maybe adding more visuals if possible. Also his reviews and assignments could use a bit more thoughts. Other than that he has done a great job.

Below is a link to David Nam’s blog “Pro Gaming Review”.

http://progamingreview.com/

Talk about In the mood for love

The film In the mood for love reflected the notion of both Elwes and Pisters. Wong Kar-wai’s In the mood for love is a typical example showing how film successfully avoids superficialness (the word “superficialness” here indicates the cinematic expression in the film but not about the love story itself) and leave adequate space for the spectator to develop their subjective interpretation. In the mood for love is an extremely artistic film movie that has exquisite camera language and visual aesthetic. The unique film aesthetic in this movie can be seen in the cloth of the actor, the shooting technique and the song in the movie. The most noticeable element in this movie is firstly the cheongsams. Cheongsam was originated in the 17th century, has a history of 300 years. As a national dress of Chinese people, the charm of cheongsam lies in its introversion and profoundness. It draws the outline of the female body curve, but meanwhile not being over sexual. Throughout the entire movie, the character Su Lizhen has changed 23 different cheongsams in total. Director Wang Kar-wai uses different patterns and colour tones of each cheongsam to insert Chinese traditional esthetic in the movie and he also uses the change of cheongsam to tell the emotion of Su Lizhen as her life changed but cheongsams are more about clarifying narration. Here are some examples from the movie screenshots.

The dark grey cheongsam which she wears when she’s moving in the apartment presents that she is an independent woman and takes charge of all the moving trivia.

The bright color and the pattern on this cheongsam represent Su Lizhen’s joy when her husband was back from a business trip, indicating that she has dressed up for her husband’s return.

Contrasting to the cheongsam above, the dull gray protrudes her low mood when she knows that her husband is leaving for another business trip.

The bright green color cheongsam that she wears when she goes to return the book to Zhou Muyun indicating she’s in a good mood.

Later the colour tone changes back to greyish white, representing her mood change.

      The other esthetic in this film is the violin music Yumeji’s Theme, a sad tone violin song appears eight times throughout the film, recording eight different important time points. The first and second time when the music played, Su Lizhen was wearing cheongsam walking slowly from the right side of the camera entering the frame and walk out of the frame from the left side. Her graceful figure, the ambiguous moment when she met Zhou Muyun on the narrow stairs, the dim light on the street corner, and the embellishment of slow motion, the whole picture achieves an extremely romantic effect. The third time when the music appears, the color tone of the picture is mainly red, the camera only includes Zhou Muyun and Su Lizhen’s face, the slow motion of the interaction between Zhou Muyun and Su Lizhen Take their affair one step further. When the fourth music played, the director 30s to shoot the smoke slowly spreading out in slow motion, symbolizing the elusive feelings between Zhou Muyun and Su Lizhen. The fifth time when the music came out, the camera moved back and forth between the reflection in mirror and the reality, the use of mirror indicate the ambiguity between Zhou Muyun and Su Lihen, the reflection in mirror is the metaphor of their relationship. The next two slow motion with the music were indicating nearly the same concept which is to protrude the beauty of Su Lizhen and the aesthetic of the movie and indicating the development of their relationship. Throughout these scenes, the director does not give the audience a clear indication of their relationship, however, it is the ambiguity hidden within each scene allows the audience to feel the film aesthetic created by the director and the aesthetic of love relationship as well. Adding on with the open ending, the name of the child standing beside Su Lizhen echoes with the title of Zhou Muyu’s Wuxia Novel, till the end the director does not give an explanation on who the child is and how their relationship develops

Installation and Vision Process

Blogs are A LOT of work, let’s just put that out there. If I didn’t have someone to guide me on the entire installation, editing, backend process I don’t think I could have gotten my blog up so fast. I found that making an account and registering the URL and domain was even a little hard for me. I couldn’t decide what name to use for my blog’s URL and the fact that I couldn’t change it after was something pressurizing. However, once I decided on the name I could tell that not being able to change it is better because you learn to own your URL name rather than keep changing and rethinking it continuously over time. After that, figuring out how to set up categories, make posts, edit the actual blog itself, was so mentally draining for me. I just couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong and how to access everything. I had a lot of help from Jaiden, my TA otherwise I was going to keep drowning in worry.

When I learned how to do editing I thought about how I was having such a hard time because of the mental block I had created for myself with overthinking. I have also learned that blogging is not easy at all. It takes a lot of you; your time, your energy, your personality, and your heart and soul literally. I’m still in the process of learning and making my vision of how I want my blog to look come alive. It’s very difficult to recreate the vision in your mind’s space out onto a canvas; whether it be on paper or digitally and you can’t understand that until you try it yourself. My blog is nowhere near what I want it to look like or “imagined” it. It’s a work in progress and creativity is not my strongest pursuit which I know a lot of people say but are saying it as a casual statement. I realize that my blog may not look like what I want it to right now, but I’ll keep working on it to get as close as I can.

WEEK WRECKER 4; HOLIDAYS

National Complaint Days Needs To Be a Holiday

I think everyone can appreciate a good holiday but there are also so many things that make me angry about them!

Racism

The fact that the Canadian government only gives days off for holidays that are a part of the Christian/catholic religions is just disgusting. If, as a country, we are going to claim to be a mosaic of cultures then all holidays should be observable and given days off for! I find that POC often have to make excuses for themselves wanting to celebrate their own holidays but when they don’t celebrate Christmas they’re the weird ones! It is an ingrained source of ethnocentrism that Canada could really do away with.

Food

Every time around the holiday season, there is a lot of food. This is not a problem. The issue that always makes my blood boil is that there is no end! Cookie, pumpkin pie, hot toddies, anything with cranberries, you name it and someone is making and offering it. I always end up gaining at least 5 pounds and it makes my clothes tight and my face bloat. I can’t stand myself around the holidays because all I can do it eat!

Gifts

I love gifts and I think it is an amazing way to show your love or appreciation for someone! What angers me is the people who put too much pressure on it. They push people over at the malls, complain about wrapping, and can’t seem to go a couple of minutes without mentioning the long list of people they have yet to buy for. There is a simple solution: don’t give gifts! If you complain about giving me a gift then I don’t want it! That makes me feel bad and I didn’t give you a gift to receive one. I only gave it because I wanted to. There is never an obligation and I think people create stess by thinking that there is.

Timing

I have a love-hate relationship with the timing of the holidays. Some of the best Indian and “traditionally Canadian” holidays happen at the end of the year starting in September with Rakhi and ending in December with New Year’s Eve. It leaves me desperate for something to do between those months. Although I enjoy every moment of the end of the year, I can’t help but wish that the joy could be spread out a little more!

Although I can find many things to be angry with about the holidays I think that it is fair to mention that no one can really be upset for too long around the holidays.

PROCESS POST WEEK 5; REVIEWING

This week the task was to review a peer’s blog and it was extremely difficult to refrain from saying only good things. Each student’s blog is meant to be about things that they enjoy and, therefore, to be critical about something that someone likes, felt wrong.

An extremely useful middle ground was the compliment sandwich method. Stating what was first praiseworthy and then moving onto how it could be made better, was a lot easier than pure criticism. Using the readings as suggestions on what to improve rather than me stating everything that could be fixed also made my review feel more like I was a friend giving advice rather than a critic just looking to see things as improvable.

Having a criterion for the critique also made the assignment less daunting. I realized it was not so much about what they were writing but rather the cohesiveness of that content, which was really well explained in the lecture.

This was a great way to gauge how I would critique someone’s work who I do not really know. I think I can apply this experience to my life because I have begun to volunteer for the SFU writing centre and I think learning to be more constructive and less fluffy is an important trick.